Alondite
Smash Journeyman
Fear not, this is not going to be another "manual vs. auto L-canceling" debate. Quite the opposite, actually.
Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself to be a video game design theorist of sorts. I enjoy looking at a game through an objective lense in an attempt to discern how it works, and what makes a game a "good" or "bad" game. I've learned a great deal about effective design methods and have a new appreciation for well-designed games; the things that Super Mario Bros. manages to accomplish using only gravity and the primary mechanic of jumping are simply incredible.
Smash Bros. is a game I've loved for a long time. It's very organically designed, and as a result, the gameplay is intuitive, deep, and incredibly dynamic. I've learned over time that a key component of design (as well as overall balance) is balancing advantage and disadvantage to give the player interesting decisions to make. After all, decision-making is a large part of what makes video games unique from passive media like books and movies; how enjoyable would video games be if there was always one obvious best answer or solution to a given situation? Ike's Fsmash has tremendous power and range, but is offset significant startup and endlag. It's up to the player to decide when and how to effectively use it based on those advantages/disadvantages.
Looking at all the design aspects of Smash Bros. eventually led me to L-canceling. I'm sure that most of Smash Boards understand's what L-canceling is: canceling the landing lag from an aerial by a properly-timed press of the shield button. The concept is simple enough. However, things started to become a bit troublesome when I started to weigh the advantages of successfully performing an L-cancel vs the disadvantage of missing one, or not attempting it at all.
Successfully performing an L-cancel significantly decreases the amount of lag suffered from an aerial, but missing it results in the same amount of lag if you hadn't attempted it at all. I trust now that you can see where the problem lies: L-canceling fails to provide an interesting decision for the player to make. There's no penalty for missing an L-cancel, only advantage to successfully performing it so there is no reason to at least not attempt it.
If not for creating more levels of offensive interplay, I'd say that L-canceling detracts from the overall design and "push-pull" of Smash Bros. Obviously L-canceling provides something positive to the gameplay experience and is worth keeping. It it's current state, however, it serves as little more than an arbitrary skill barrier. In this way it's easy to see where the argument for auto L-canceling comes from. And you know what? They are correct; automatic L-canceling is an objectively better solution than what is currently used. I don't believe, however, that it's the best solution because is takes the choice out of the player's hands entirely. Obviously there must be a better solution. I asked myself "how can we make L-canceling both provide a meaningful decision for the player to make as well as further rewarding skillful play even moreso than the current system of L-canceling?"
I think I've come up with a solution that will please both parties. It really wasn't that difficult once I looked at it from a design perspective; there simply is no disadvantage to screwing up an L-canceling, making it functionally identical to not attempting one at all. The solution? Simply add a disadvantage to L-canceling. I deemed the most effective way to do this would be to add in a lag penalty for missing an L-cancel, resulting in even greater lag than if you hadn't attempted one at all.
Let's look at this example. Fox's dair can be tough to L-cancel due to the multi-hit nature affecting the timing. If missing an L-cancel resulted in even more lag than not doing one at all, it would give players a decision to make. "Do I have faith enough in my skill to pull it off? Should I even attempt it?" I think you can see how this further rewards skillful play as well. Players who can readily pull it off will do so regularly, but players who might not be as adept with the timing may either screw it up, or not even attempt it, giving the advantage to the more skillful player. This also opens up a world of character design and balance options that I won't get into now, but that don't require much effort to see.
Obviously this presents some design challenges in itself. How do you balance the advantage vs disadvantage? If the lag penalty is too severe, players won't attempt it, and if it's not severe enough, or if players will easily have success then it once again fails to provide an interesting decision to make. In the former case, simply reducing the lag penalty works well enough, but in the second case, extending the landing lag won't matter if players are always hitting L-cancels, so simply decrease the timing window.
There are even more design elements to consider. For example, how can failure/success be communicated to the player so that they can make informed decisions instead of guessing? Project M already does this in a rather elegant way, which I consider to be one of, if not its single greatest design success: that little white flash upon successfully performing an L-cancel. Simply add a similar type of flash when the player whiffs an L-cancel. Yellow and red are already taken by various armor types, so to prevent overlap and player confusion something like blacking out the character for a moment and/or increasing the size of the dustcloud could provide a fitting alternative that intuitively communicates to the player: The black flash opposite to the white success flash, and the dustcloud simulating a harder landing.
I feel that such a mechanical change to L-canceling adds considerable depth while not altering the actual function and resulting options in any way, thus being all positive with no negative.
I fear, however, that codding issues and/or the political nature of Project M development (wanting what gives you an advantage rather than what is ultimately the best solution for everyone) could get in the way. I'm interested in hearing what you all think. If the feedback is positive, I'd be more than happy to contribute some other similar design changes that could be made without sacrificing anything or altering the way the game is played in a significant way.
Let me preface this by saying that I consider myself to be a video game design theorist of sorts. I enjoy looking at a game through an objective lense in an attempt to discern how it works, and what makes a game a "good" or "bad" game. I've learned a great deal about effective design methods and have a new appreciation for well-designed games; the things that Super Mario Bros. manages to accomplish using only gravity and the primary mechanic of jumping are simply incredible.
Smash Bros. is a game I've loved for a long time. It's very organically designed, and as a result, the gameplay is intuitive, deep, and incredibly dynamic. I've learned over time that a key component of design (as well as overall balance) is balancing advantage and disadvantage to give the player interesting decisions to make. After all, decision-making is a large part of what makes video games unique from passive media like books and movies; how enjoyable would video games be if there was always one obvious best answer or solution to a given situation? Ike's Fsmash has tremendous power and range, but is offset significant startup and endlag. It's up to the player to decide when and how to effectively use it based on those advantages/disadvantages.
Looking at all the design aspects of Smash Bros. eventually led me to L-canceling. I'm sure that most of Smash Boards understand's what L-canceling is: canceling the landing lag from an aerial by a properly-timed press of the shield button. The concept is simple enough. However, things started to become a bit troublesome when I started to weigh the advantages of successfully performing an L-cancel vs the disadvantage of missing one, or not attempting it at all.
Successfully performing an L-cancel significantly decreases the amount of lag suffered from an aerial, but missing it results in the same amount of lag if you hadn't attempted it at all. I trust now that you can see where the problem lies: L-canceling fails to provide an interesting decision for the player to make. There's no penalty for missing an L-cancel, only advantage to successfully performing it so there is no reason to at least not attempt it.
If not for creating more levels of offensive interplay, I'd say that L-canceling detracts from the overall design and "push-pull" of Smash Bros. Obviously L-canceling provides something positive to the gameplay experience and is worth keeping. It it's current state, however, it serves as little more than an arbitrary skill barrier. In this way it's easy to see where the argument for auto L-canceling comes from. And you know what? They are correct; automatic L-canceling is an objectively better solution than what is currently used. I don't believe, however, that it's the best solution because is takes the choice out of the player's hands entirely. Obviously there must be a better solution. I asked myself "how can we make L-canceling both provide a meaningful decision for the player to make as well as further rewarding skillful play even moreso than the current system of L-canceling?"
I think I've come up with a solution that will please both parties. It really wasn't that difficult once I looked at it from a design perspective; there simply is no disadvantage to screwing up an L-canceling, making it functionally identical to not attempting one at all. The solution? Simply add a disadvantage to L-canceling. I deemed the most effective way to do this would be to add in a lag penalty for missing an L-cancel, resulting in even greater lag than if you hadn't attempted one at all.
Let's look at this example. Fox's dair can be tough to L-cancel due to the multi-hit nature affecting the timing. If missing an L-cancel resulted in even more lag than not doing one at all, it would give players a decision to make. "Do I have faith enough in my skill to pull it off? Should I even attempt it?" I think you can see how this further rewards skillful play as well. Players who can readily pull it off will do so regularly, but players who might not be as adept with the timing may either screw it up, or not even attempt it, giving the advantage to the more skillful player. This also opens up a world of character design and balance options that I won't get into now, but that don't require much effort to see.
Obviously this presents some design challenges in itself. How do you balance the advantage vs disadvantage? If the lag penalty is too severe, players won't attempt it, and if it's not severe enough, or if players will easily have success then it once again fails to provide an interesting decision to make. In the former case, simply reducing the lag penalty works well enough, but in the second case, extending the landing lag won't matter if players are always hitting L-cancels, so simply decrease the timing window.
There are even more design elements to consider. For example, how can failure/success be communicated to the player so that they can make informed decisions instead of guessing? Project M already does this in a rather elegant way, which I consider to be one of, if not its single greatest design success: that little white flash upon successfully performing an L-cancel. Simply add a similar type of flash when the player whiffs an L-cancel. Yellow and red are already taken by various armor types, so to prevent overlap and player confusion something like blacking out the character for a moment and/or increasing the size of the dustcloud could provide a fitting alternative that intuitively communicates to the player: The black flash opposite to the white success flash, and the dustcloud simulating a harder landing.
I feel that such a mechanical change to L-canceling adds considerable depth while not altering the actual function and resulting options in any way, thus being all positive with no negative.
I fear, however, that codding issues and/or the political nature of Project M development (wanting what gives you an advantage rather than what is ultimately the best solution for everyone) could get in the way. I'm interested in hearing what you all think. If the feedback is positive, I'd be more than happy to contribute some other similar design changes that could be made without sacrificing anything or altering the way the game is played in a significant way.